


Green Thumb

by caledfwlchthat



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Growing Up, It's Hard and Nobody Understands, Mad Science, New Universe, Pesterlog, Regular Science, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 12:57:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6986065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caledfwlchthat/pseuds/caledfwlchthat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose and Jade have a conversation about growing tomatoes, which ends up turning into a conversation about the completely open-ended challenges of shaping and living in the new universe they and their friends have created.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Green Thumb

**Author's Note:**

> A stand-alone prologue or intro to future Homestuck new-universe science fiction narratives. Qualifying work for Ladystuck Remix Challenge 2016.

  
Your name is JADE. You've been living for a couple of months in a NEW UNIVERSE of your own creation. This isn't an idle claim; you and your friends went through some pretty fantastical things...

At the moment, you're trying to get VEGETABLES to grow on an alien planet. Although this sounds hard, it is in fact even harder. But you're stubbornly determined to make it happen. You have repopulated the GREENHOUSE in your abode with trays of dirt, each bearing one or more PLANT SEEDS, which you tend and water every day, and take careful notes on.

You are just taking some notes when an old friend drops by unannounced.  


==>

ROSE: May I come in?  
JADE: oh hi rose!  
JADE: yeah sure come on in  
JADE: im not really doing anything that important  
ROSE: I can't help thinking we all feel that way these days.  
ROSE: But never mind that, for now. What are you up to?

==>

JADE: im trying to get pumpkins to grow in my garden  
JADE: but its turning out to be harder than i thought!  
ROSE: Really?  
ROSE: I thought you were quite an experienced hand at gardening.  
JADE: well ive done it for as long as i can remember  
JADE: my grandpa showed me how to look after the garden when i was small  
JADE: and my plants were doing fine until john became my server player  
ROSE: I expect John's tender ministrations would be a traumatic influence for anything dependent on having a stable configuration in your house.  
ROSE: But in retrospect, I'm not really one to talk.  
ROSE: My inaugural action upon booting up as his server player was to completely demolish his bathroom.  
JADE: hahaha yeah thats exactly how it went!  
JADE: he dumped all my plants off the balcony without even asking  
JADE: he needed the room for important equipment but it still sucked  
JADE: anyway now that we have a little more time to ourselves  
JADE: im trying to replant my garden and restore it to its former glory  
ROSE: Hmmm. Your garden set a most exacting standard, if I recall.  
ROSE: Reconstructing it could be a difficult task even under the most auspicious circumstances.  
JADE: unfortunately these are rather less auspicious than that  
JADE: we dont have many good materials to work with right now!  
JADE: the earth was pretty soggy from the oceans the condesce had flooded it with  
JADE: there was still life left in the ocean but the biosphere took a long time to recover from the shock  
JADE: and most of the good food supply items are really hard to find now  
ROSE: Seriously?  
ROSE: Aren't we supposed to have literally godlike powers at this point?  
ROSE: I mean, we *made* this universe and everything in it.  
ROSE: Surely we can make something as simple as a few tomatoes?

==>

JADE: we tried a few tricks!  
JADE: those motifs dave and i used to fast forward the recovery process  
JADE: and jane joining in with her life powers to encourage growth  
JADE: the problem is that biodiversity simply isnt what it once was  
JADE: a lot of the land plants just died out!  
ROSE: Hmmm.  
ROSE: So, no source genetic material. That's clearly a problem.  
ROSE: But what about Dave? Can't he rewind to a time before the floods?  
JADE: he cant rewind to any time before the earth entered our session  
JADE: since thats his first point of contact with it in his own timeline  
ROSE: What about Roxy? She recovered Kanaya's Matriorb, after all.  
ROSE: Can't she just... I don't know, manifest a tomato?  
JADE: we thought of that but she has to have something to work with  
JADE: i dont think shes even ever seen a whole tomato before!  
JADE: remember she grew up well after the earth was flooded  
ROSE: That... would present difficulties for her.  
JADE: i tried to talk to her about what she could do  
JADE: i dont really know how the voidy thing works  
JADE: but from what she told me, it sounds like in order to manifest anything from the void, she needs to hold a complete description of the thing shes trying to call up in her head  
JADE: that makes biological things really difficult  
JADE: she needs the information equivalent of the whole genetic code  
ROSE: Which brings us back to the problem, as you framed it.  
ROSE: No biodiversity, so no genetic code, so no tomatoes from nothing.  
ROSE: Lost information, rather than lost materials.  
JADE: yeah pretty much  
JADE: so it looks like no tomatoes for right now!  
JADE: we did try to plant the one vegetable she could make easily  
ROSE: Wait, wait. Don't tell me.  
ROSE: Roxy's pumpkins don't grow on new Earth.  
ROSE: Because they're associated with the Void aspect and are therefore doomed to irrelevance and obscurity.  
JADE: well i tried planting some pumpkin seeds anyway  
JADE: just to see what would happen  
JADE: the vines do okay for a while but then they sort of shrivel and die  
JADE: they never really even get to the point of bearing fruit

==>

ROSE: So, why shouldn't we be more worried about all this?  
ROSE: In fact, why isn't this urgent, four-alarm emergency material?  
ROSE: Wouldn't it be ironic for us to beat several supposedly invincible foes, only to be laid low by an adversary as prosaic as starvation?  
JADE: well, everyone should be okay for quite a while actually  
JADE: its only been a couple of months after all!  
JADE: roxy and dirk have years worth of supplies in their houses  
JADE: ive got a pretty serious stash too since ive had to live by myself all these years!  
ROSE: Yes, we know. Roxy especially has been very generous.  
ROSE: But to be honest, we're all getting somewhat weary of pumpkin pie, pumpkin curry, pumpkin soup, pumpkin chickpea tagine...  
ROSE: In the face of an unstemmed onslaught of voidy orange gourds, expiration from malnourishment seems salubrious by comparison.  
JADE: hahaha, its probably just because thats all she knows how to cook  
ROSE: I will neither confirm nor deny the truth of that proposition.  
ROSE: But wait! Good thing we have Jane to bake for us!  
ROSE: And so it came to pass that after my seventeenth pumpkin muffin, I threw up my hands in disgust and went to find you.  
ROSE: I didn't necessarily think you would have something helpful to say about this predicament in particular.  
ROSE: I just wanted to talk to someone I hadn't seen in a while, who might be able to relate to some of my frustration.  
ROSE: And it occurred to me that that someone was basically you.  
ROSE: You've been pretty scarce around the proverbial campfire lately.  
ROSE: Is this what you've been up to for the past few weeks?

==>

JADE: well once i discovered that things werent growing right  
JADE: i realized it could become an issue pretty soon!  
JADE: so ive been hard at work running experiments  
JADE: to get a better idea of what we need to do  
JADE: i tried some samples from my seed bank in the basement  
JADE: including tomatoes!  
ROSE: Wait, what? You actually have one of those?  
ROSE: Doesn't that solve the whole biodiversity problem right there?  
ROSE: Why are we still having this discussion?  
JADE: because those seeds died too!  
JADE: they get plenty of sunlight and fresh water  
JADE: and i brought some soil from new earth to plant them in  
JADE: but they all sort of withered mysteriously away  
ROSE: Can't Jane help with that?  
JADE: she can help speed up the process  
JADE: and in fact i did get her to boost the growth rate a bit  
JADE: otherwise i would never have figured even this much out by now  
JADE: but the plants still cant grow if they dont have what they need  
ROSE: Why don't you just give the seeds to Roxy?  
ROSE: This really seems like the sort of thing she ought to be able to handle.  
ROSE: She appearified a matriorb out of nothing, to be sure.  
JADE: well if you worked with her you might be able to help get the genetic codes into her head  
ROSE: A Light/Void motif? Twisted. I like it.  
JADE: but the problem is in scaling up production and making it sustainable  
JADE: why should roxy make everything by hand all the time?  
JADE: it would be much better if we could grow things  
JADE: and solving this problem means figuring out why we cant yet  
ROSE: Uggghhh. What a conundrum.  
ROSE: Egg, meet chicken. Chicken, egg.  
ROSE: What else have you tried?  
JADE: well, you can see there are plenty of trees here on lofaf  
JADE: so i tried putting a few plants in the local soil  
JADE: with pretty much the same results  
JADE: the local plants didnt do too well in the earth soil either!  
ROSE: I guess that's also to be expected.  
ROSE: Given that these planets were all originally game constructs in the first place, made material when we imported them into the new universe we currently inhabit.  
ROSE: Their main redeeming feature being that they had our old Earth houses on them.  
JADE: hahaha yeah!  
JADE: but they might come in handy later on anyway  
ROSE: All right, what next?  
ROSE: Are we any closer to understanding what's really going on?

==>

JADE: well, thinking about what could be different  
JADE: our sun looks pretty similar to earths old sun  
JADE: so i doubt its a problem with the radiation spectrum  
JADE: the details of the soil chemistry could be different  
JADE: or the bacteria in the soil, like the ones that beans use to take nitrogen from the atmosphere and turn it into plant stuff  
JADE: both the nutrients and the bacteria could have changed a lot on earth after the floods  
JADE: either one might be enough to mess up plant growth  
JADE: unfortunately i dont have the equipment or the knowledge to look into those in more detail  
JADE: my main specialty is physics  
JADE: so thats what my lab is set up for!  
JADE: gardening has mostly been just a hobby until now  
ROSE: Hmmm.  
ROSE: And do we have any biologists among us?  
JADE: um  
JADE: actually  
JADE: i dont know?  
JADE: ...  
ROSE: Neither do I?  
JADE: well  
JADE: i dont know of anyone with knowledge who can help us out  
JADE: john did our ectobiology but hes not great with earth biology  
JADE: dave and karkat dont have much expertise there either  
JADE: jane and roxy are nice but i dont know them that well  
JADE: and the others...  
JADE: i still dont really know well at all  
JADE: i slept through most of the catch ups and kind of fell behind :(  
ROSE: Didn't you talk a lot with Kanaya about frog breeding?  
ROSE: She mentioned she helped you out with that at some point.  
JADE: oh!  
JADE: yeah i guess i did  
JADE: she was really helpful and friendly!  
ROSE: But I take your point.  
ROSE: And this is kind of my point too:  
ROSE: That we all seem to have fallen back into our old patterns.  
JADE: we have?

==>

ROSE: It's understandable, given what we've been through.  
ROSE: After three years of mind-numbing boredom in transit, flanked by two frenetic episodes of largely reactive activity focused on just trying to survive, much less thrive,  
ROSE: We've certainly earned ourselves a chance to sit back and not have to worry about existential threats anymore.  
ROSE: But I think none of us thought carefully about what we'd find after we finally walked through that door.  
ROSE: We've hacked our way through all the short-term crises, but they were all defined for us by the challenges of the moment.  
ROSE: Now the pressure is off, and we face the harder task of defining the long-term goal of living without those constraints.  
ROSE: Not too long before the final battle, I threw a kind of...  
ROSE: Hissy fit, I guess.  
ROSE: About that crazy cat-sprite version of myself.  
ROSE: I couldn't see a reason for it to exist, in the context of a carefully constructed series of challenges for us to overcome.  
ROSE: Call it character-building... like arcs in a narrative.  
ROSE: Dave didn't miss a beat, and told me we didn't have "arcs", we were just human beings.  
ROSE: And when I think back about my own experiences, and how open-ended they actually were despite the temptation to think of them as linear and purposeful,  
ROSE: About all the times I deliberately steered off the rails leading us consistently towards what in many other timelines became a tragedy of classically Hellenic proportions,  
ROSE: I see he was totally right.  
ROSE: But we're not really ready to think about ourselves that way yet.  
ROSE: What do you do when the constraints are lifted, and you're staring there at a blank page, an empty canvas, a featureless block?  
ROSE: How to narrow down the infinite possibilities of what could be, and start making something that will be into something that is?  
JADE: i see what you mean!  
JADE: i guess... you just start writing?  
JADE: or drawing? or whatever you want?  
ROSE: I know, right?  
ROSE: But, you know.  
ROSE: What if it sucks?  
ROSE: What if, in fact, it is objectively worse than any eleventh-hour solution you improvised to the problems you faced when the race was on and the stakes felt higher?  
JADE: well then you try something else!  
ROSE: Let me tell you about what we've all been trying so far.

==>

ROSE: Construction on New Can Town is going forward. Dave, Karkat, Terezi, and the Mayor are jointly overseeing that process.  
ROSE: But it's slow and awkward.  
ROSE: Our alchemical rigs still seem to function in our new environment, which I guess makes sense because it's still a universe SBURB made.  
ROSE: But we're desperately low on grist, since we "blew our load," as Dave rather crudely described it, on the Ultimate Alchemy.  
ROSE: The only way to acquire new grist is to cannibalize existing items.  
ROSE: So of course, the most plentiful kind of grist available is Build Grist, which we obtain by shaving floors off of our absurdly overgrown domiciles.  
ROSE: The SBURB cursors are also comically accident-prone, as you know, so the plumbing will no doubt have to be installed by hand.  
JADE: (hehehehe)  
ROSE: Occasionally there are All-Strider soccer matches.  
ROSE: Dirks vs. Daves, splinter-selves against stable-loop instances.  
ROSE: That's entertaining but requires some very observant referees.  
ROSE: Roxy and I have had some really great ecto-filial catch-up time, when she wasn't cooking pumpkin for us, or trying to help the carapaces and various land consorts adjust to Life After Victory.  
ROSE: And I haven't talked much to our other post-scratch relatives.  
ROSE: John? I have no idea what that dear boy is up to.  
ROSE: Kanaya has mostly been relaxing.  
ROSE: Designing dresses for us, taking walks in the sunshine.  
ROSE: Reading the old pulp gothic novels I have cached under my bed.  
JADE: hmmm  
JADE: that all sounds like fun to me!  
JADE: so she hasnt used the matriorb yet?  
ROSE: No.  
ROSE: She says she'll take it out of storage soon.  
ROSE: When conditions are more favorable for reviving the troll species.  
ROSE: But she won't specify what those conditions are supposed to be.  
ROSE: It makes me kind of nervous, actually.  
JADE: how come?  
ROSE: I'm still trying to process that.  
ROSE: But I guess it's because I'm uneasy about what it will mean for our own relationship.  
ROSE: It's a bit like thinking about having a hundred million children, with all the attendant responsibility for each one, without even being sure if you're ready to take care of one child yet.  
ROSE: When you still feel like a child yourself, in fact.  
ROSE: And I feel like when she gets around to it, it'll put pressure on us to repopulate the Earth with members of our own species.  
ROSE: Despite the sense of crushing responsibility I feel to contribute towards that goal, I'm not sure if that's what I want.  
ROSE: Now... or ever.  
ROSE: Roxy may be all the kids I really feel like having.  
ROSE: Is that selfish of me?  
JADE: no i dont think so rose  
JADE: for one thing, the trolls have always had kind of weird ideas about reproduction, at least judged by human standards  
JADE: especially karkat and his shipping grids  
JADE: are you sure you arent imposing your idea of motherhood on kanaya?  
JADE: maybe this wont be as big a deal for you two as you think?  
ROSE: I wondered about that.  
ROSE: But given my own life experiences, I have only the faintest notion of what constructive motherhood really looks like, anyway.  
ROSE: It could just be the opposite of everything Freud suggests.  
ROSE: Nevertheless, that leaves quite a wide margin for error.  
JADE: why dont you just talk to her about it?  
JADE: go tell her exactly what you told me just now!  
ROSE: I guess...  
ROSE: That's actually what a mature adult would suggest?  
ROSE: Thanks, Jade. I feel both grateful, and kind of silly.  
JADE: well like you said  
JADE: we still have a lot to figure out about our own lives  
JADE: and there arent really any right or wrong answers anymore!  
JADE: we havent ended up living lives anything like we expected  
JADE: so maybe we can just respect that and live them for ourselves?  
JADE: i dont know  
JADE: im sure well know what to do when the time comes!  
ROSE: I hope you're right.  
ROSE: I've been searching for answers, but it's hard to have patience with the search.  
ROSE: Ever since we entered the new universe, I've felt cut off from my sources of Light.  
ROSE: I underestimated how much I relied on extracting information by means of eldritch sorcery, rather than by carefully crafting questions designed to pierce the veil of ignorance by virtue of their form alone.  
JADE: yeah i kind of know what you mean  
JADE: i havent really dreamed much without the clouds of skaia  
JADE: so ive thrown myself back into other things i used to enjoy  
JADE: in order to give myself something real to focus on  
ROSE: Exactly.  
ROSE: So, here's what I've been thinking.

==>

ROSE: We're in a new and unfamiliar universe.  
ROSE: It seems like Skaia, in its usual inscrutable and impersonal way, has generated the laws of that universe for us, based on some criteria we can only assume have something loosely to do with us and our personalities and intentions.  
ROSE: But those laws remain mysterious to us.  
ROSE: Both as Earth dwellers, and as SBURB winners.  
ROSE: In one sense, we know all there is to know about our new universe.  
ROSE: It's a frog that you bred specifically for the purpose of being our home, which came into being with a Vast Croak a scant two months ago by our own personal clocks.  
ROSE: But as denizens of the universe, seeing it from the inside,  
ROSE: We have no idea how big it is, what it's made of, what its ultimate fate will be, or how it's supposed to work.  
ROSE: Nor do we really understand our place in it.  
ROSE: We've got much more influence than we had over old Earth, and we have no reason to believe yet that our god-tier immortality has expired along with its function in SBURB.  
ROSE: But not all of our powers seem to work here, or at least work exactly the way we would expect them to in our SBURB sessions.  
ROSE: What are the limits of our influence, and why?  
ROSE: Are they circumstantial, like the paucity of grist?  
ROSE: Or are they more fundamental, like the loss of some of your Space powers after the Green Sun was destroyed?  
ROSE: I think it's high time we stepped up our game once more.  
ROSE: To wring answers to our questions from the universe's very fabric, increasing our mastery until we truly are the gods we purport to be.  
ROSE: And can shape this universe into something marvelous and worthy of the aspirations we ought to have held in creating it.  
JADE: well rose  
JADE: that sounds like a noble and worthy goal!  
JADE: but i hope you wont have to blow too many things up to achieve it?  
ROSE: ...  
ROSE: Hahahaha!  
ROSE: No. No indeed.  
ROSE: I hope to be somewhat less... wanton with my destruction this time.

==>

JADE: tell you what  
JADE: you and i seem to be the most interested in doing science so far  
JADE: exploring and developing the new universe will be a big project  
JADE: its going to take a lot of scientific knowledge that we might have learned in school if only wed ever gotten to attend it  
JADE: and perhaps quite a lot that we never would have learned  
JADE: well have to figure out a lot of this stuff for ourselves!  
JADE: im really interested in understanding why plants wont grow here  
JADE: in terms of the biology and ecology of post-flood earth and of the post-victory medium planets  
JADE: but i dont really see myself as a coordinator  
JADE: at least, not without specific goals or projects to work on  
JADE: youve always been driven and now you have a vision as well!  
JADE: maybe this is a good situation for you to take the lead?  
ROSE: Maybe it is?  
ROSE: Hopefully John won't get too annoyed about it, given his de facto status as our leader in the previous session.  
ROSE: Then again, he did always seem to wear the mantle of leadership lightly, unlike, say, Karkat.  
ROSE: I doubt he'd be too troubled by the transfer, or delegation, of proximate authority.  
ROSE: Especially when what we need most right now is information, which, as a Seer of Light, I feel uniquely poised to provide.  
JADE: thats the spirit!  
JADE: why dont you go see who knows something about earth biology  
JADE: or troll biology, in detail  
JADE: ill try to rig up an electron microscope  
JADE: assuming electrons are even things here!  
JADE: and whatever other equipment we might need to make progress  
JADE: in fact see if anyone can help with engineering too?  
ROSE: Absolutely.  
ROSE: I'll try to assist in generating new hypotheses to test.  
ROSE: Even if I'm not fully conversant in the individual knowledge areas, I have a good sense of what should follow from what.  
ROSE: We're going to need all our combined talents to make this go.  
ROSE: I'll be back soon.  
JADE: see you later!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Green Thumb (Labyrinthine Lalonde Mix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7562446) by [a_mere_trifle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_mere_trifle/pseuds/a_mere_trifle)




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